Could Foxconn be Considering Making Their Own Hardware?

A new rumor has surfaced suggesting that Foxconn could be preparing to make its own tablet and smartphone hardware in the near future.

The new rumor comes from DigiTimes, who has a history of spreading rumors that aren’t always 100 percent accurate. Still, they’ve had some good calls too. Does this sound completely crazy? Not really. While building devices like the iPhone and iPad is very lucrative for the company, having their own hardware could help expand their presence even further. Many techies also know that Foxconn builds great phones for other companies, so that might give consumers some confidence that these would be quality products. Of course Foxconn is also known for treating employees badly, and so many consumers outside of China might possibly be leery of buying their stuff.

If they did make such a move, odds are it would only be in the Chinese market and perhaps a few other parts of Asia. This would help them expand without stepping on the feet of its parnters like Sony, Apple and countless others.
Foxconn already has a chain of retail stores in China and plans to open them up in Brazil as well. These stores currently carry PCs, motherboards and other components. Adding smartphones to the mix doesn’t sound that crazy. It’s still hard to say whether there is any merit to the rumor or not.

Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a small line of Chinese-only devices hit the market running local operating systems like Aliyun OS. If any of this is true, Foxconn just needs to tread carefully and not risk existing partnerships with the bigger phone producers out there.

What do you think? Just a pointless rumor, or something that could prove to be true?